The Raiders rolled the dice on Saturday when they traded up (one pick) to get the first pick in the fourth round of the draft and selected Tennessee cornerback Jermod McCoy.
McCoy would have been a top 10 or 15 prospect in the draft if not for a knee injury he suffered 15 months ago. The injury ended up being more significant than most ACL tears and McCoy ended up needing a “plug” to repair bone and cartilage in his knee.
Some NFL teams believe McCoy’s career could be over if he is forced to have another surgery, but it was a risk the Raiders were willing to take given their current situation at cornerback.
Most fans aren’t familiar with the procedure that put McCoy in this position and Dr. David J. Chao (former Chargers team doctor) did his best to explain the procedure on his podcast this week.
“They said he had a plug. What is a plug? A plug is an osteochondral graft. Articular cartilage with bone underneath, which means the original injury knocked off articular cartilage down to the bone and plugs are cartilage transplantation, whether his own tissue or from a cadaver,” Chao said of the injury and subsequent surgical procedure.
“They don’t last and it’s not the worry about needing another surgery, because if that other surgery were just a meniscus trim, the worry is he’s already got arthritis from the ACL injury, and he already has a plug and might need another one. That’s why from the get-go we’re saying more like [a day three pick] than day one,” Chao continued.
“Medically, does he fail a physical today? Probably. Could he return to play some football. Probably. But to me, medically, that’s a day three pick, not day one. People were surprised by day one, but day two was no given, either, and obviously he’s a day three pick.”
Safe to say, there isn’t a lot of confidence among the NFL’s medical community that McCoy is going to bounce back (at least not for long), but with the need the Raiders have at cornerback, the risk was worth a fourth-round pick.
With McCoy on the roster, the Raiders now have two key members of their defense dealing with cartilage issues. Maxx Crosby has a recovering knee that potentially has a degenerative issue and ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler reported on that dynamic last month.
“The consensus was that Crosby would be able to play in 2026,” Fowler reported in March. “[But] the Ravens’ concern centered on the uncertainty of Crosby’s durability after a couple of seasons in Baltimore because of a degenerative issue in his knee, a source told ESPN.”
x: @raidersbeat
